Infinite

by Brian Freeman

  At first, all I saw was a halo of light, but inside it, I recognized a face that made everything better. Karly stood over me. Slowly, as if not believing what she was seeing, she put her hands against her cheeks, her fingers trembling. Her lips moved but made no sound. As I stared up at her, her face dissolved into uncontrollable tears. She sobbed, and then she fell to her knees and threw her arms around me and held me tighter than anyone had ever held me in my life.

  “Dylan.”

  Three weeks, Karly told me.

  She waited until my disorientation had mostly gone away, which took several hours. By then, I was aware of being in a hospital room.

  Three weeks, she told me.

  Three weeks I’d been in a coma.

  It was what they called a medically induced coma, in which they kept me sedated in order to give my brain and lungs a chance to heal from my lack of oxygen under the water. Nobody had known whether I would ever wake up.

  “You got pneumonia in the early days,” she told me, sitting with me by the bed and not letting go of my hand. “You could hardly breathe. They thought you were going to die. God, I was so scared.”

  “My chest hurts,” I said, in a raspy voice.

  “Try not to talk. Your lungs still need to heal. Let me talk.”

  “Okay.”

  “The doctors weren’t sure about—about whether you’d come out of this with your brain functions intact. They said I needed to prepare myself for bad outcomes. But Alicia said the scans showed your brain activity was strong the entire time. In fact, she said the activity was hyperintense, like your mind was going through some kind of frenzied experience. She was sure you’d come out of it okay. She said Roscoe was looking out for you somewhere.”

  I smiled without saying anything. Part of it was gratitude, for surviving, for Karly being there for me, for coming through the experience of nearly drowning with my awareness and motor skills intact. Part of it was also the thought of Roscoe watching over me.

  I’d seen him again, and that was a gift. Everything I’d been through was a gift.

  The nurses called it a miracle. They didn’t throw that word around lightly. I’d been without oxygen for nearly four minutes, which was dangerously close to the point at which brain damage would be irreversible. The day nurse had already been in after I awakened, asking me questions, testing my cognition. What’s your name? What year is it? What city are you in? Apparently, I passed the test.

  However, she was puzzled by the one question I asked her.

  “Where is Nighthawks?”

  I asked it several times, and finally, she called in Karly for help. My wife gave me a strange look, but she answered the question. “It’s in the Art Institute, where it always is. Thanks to Edgar, of course. He’s been by to visit you several times. Every time he was here, he told you the story again.”

  That was what I needed to hear. All was right with my world. With that, I was able to sleep.

  I recovered for another full day before Karly said, “Do you remember what happened at the river?”

  I shook my head. What I remembered I didn’t trust.

  “Do you want me to tell you about it? We don’t have to do this now. We can wait until you’re stronger.”

  “Please,” I murmured.

  “Okay. Well, we were driving home from our weekend away. The river had overflowed the highway, and we—we drove right into it.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Karly put a hand on my cheek and stared at me with a deep regret in her eyes. “Don’t use that word. That’s my word. Dylan, there’s so much I need to say to you, but let me get through this first.”

  “Go on.”

  “The car submerged. We were both trapped. I’ve never been so terrified. A tree came through the car window and nearly took our heads off. You were able to get out, but as you pulled me with you, the river ripped the car away. We were separated.”

  She described the experience in a monotone, as if it had happened to someone else. I think that was the only way she could talk about it.

  “I was alone. You were gone. I was running out of air in this little pocket near the windshield. I tried opening the car door, but it was blocked. I realized I was going to die. I was trying to make peace with it. And yet—I don’t know—I knew you would never leave me. I knew you’d come back and find me and save me. I just knew it. I don’t know how much time passed. Probably only a few seconds, but it felt like forever. Then you were thumping on the windshield to let me know you were there. Somehow you dislodged the car and got the door open, and I was able to get out. I swam to the surface and made it to the riverbank. I thought you were right behind me. But then I realized you weren’t coming up. You were still under the water. Thank God someone was there. A man from a nearby farm had seen the accident, and he’d already called 911. I could hear the sirens. I screamed to him that you were still down there, that you must be trapped. He went in after you. He found you by the car, with the seat belt wound around your ankle. He had a knife and was able to cut you free, but by the time he got you out, you weren’t breathing. The ambulance was there, but I could see in the faces of the paramedics that they didn’t think you were going to make it.”

  I brought her hand to my lips and kissed it. “The farmer who cut me loose. What did he look like?”

  “Look like?”

  “Did he look like me?”

  A curious smile crossed her face. It was an odd question. “A little bit, I guess. You’ll get to meet him. Once you have your strength back, we’ll drive down there and thank him together. His name is Harvey Bushing.”

  I laughed, which made me cough.

  “What’s funny?” Karly asked me.

  “Life. Fate. God.”

  She was still holding my hand. We sat silently, as an echo of horror rippled over both of us and slowly receded. I watched Karly open her mouth to say something more, then close it again. Her eyes filled with tears. It was a dam bursting, letting out guilt and shame and remorse. I knew how she felt, because I’d felt all the same things.

  “Dylan, what happened before—what I did—”

  I squeezed her hand. “Stop.”

  “I’m just so sorry. Please, please, say you can forgive me. If I hadn’t been such a fool—”

  “Stop,” I said again.

  “I love you. I love you so much. You’re my world. What I did, how I betrayed you, I can’t believe that was me.”

  “Karly.”

  She clamped her mouth shut and wiped her face. Her messy blond hair dangled across her cheeks.

  “It wasn’t you,” I told her, struggling with the words.

  “Don’t talk. You shouldn’t talk.”

  “I have to. Listen to me. This was my fault. I almost lost you, because I couldn’t let go of my past. You saw something in me the day we met, and I’ve never been able to live up to it. I’ve spent my life angry and bitter and frustrated with the whole world, instead of treasuring what the world gave me. You. Well, that other Dylan is gone. I killed him. I just hope it’s not too late for the two of us.”

  Karly started crying again. “It’s not. Believe me, it’s not.”

  “You married one Dylan Moran,” I told her, “but I swear to you, I’m not the same, not anymore. I’m not him. I’m a different man.”

  Later that day, Karly went home to shower, and I slept in the hospital bed. My sleep felt absolutely dreamless, which was just what I wanted. Then I opened my eyes and recoiled, seeing a woman in a white hospital coat looking down at me. Underneath the white coat, she was dressed in black.

  All at once, I felt as if I’d jumped down the rabbit hole again.

  “Mr. Moran? I’m Dr. Eve Brier.”

  It was her. She hadn’t changed at all. She gave me that mysterious smile that was all too familiar. Her eyes had the same seductive quality that I remembered from—

  From what?

  From a dream?

  Or from other worlds?

  “I know who you are,
” I said.

  That made her hesitate. “You know me? Well, your wife probably mentioned that I’m the doctor who’s been monitoring you while you were in your coma. You had us all very worried. It’s a great relief to see you doing so well.”

  “Thank you.”

  I kept looking for a sign in her face, for some kind of recognition that she knew what had been happening to me. I wanted her to admit that she was still my conjurer. My magician.

  Instead, she checked my vitals, and that was all.

  “We’ll still need to monitor you closely for a while, Mr. Moran, but right now, everything looks extremely promising.”

  “Good.”

  “You may find you have memory lapses,” she added, as if I were lying on her couch in Hancock Center, twenty-nine floors above the endless lights of the Lucent sculpture.

  “Not so far,” I said. Then I added pointedly, “I remember everything.”

  “I’m pleased to hear it, but you may still experience side effects from the oxygen deprivation. You may become aware of cognitive difficulties that require some relearning and rehabilitation. I also suggest that you think about getting counseling after you’re released. The physical implications of what you’ve been through are serious enough, but there are likely to be emotional and psychological ramifications, too. Don’t feel that you have to manage those things alone.”

  “If I have Karly, I’ll be fine.”

  “I understand, but you may want to consider professional counseling, too.”

  I said nothing. Dr. Brier looked disconcerted by my attitude. She checked my pulse, which she’d already done, and the touch of her fingers was warm. Her nails were long, and they pressed slightly into my skin. Then she bent over to check my lungs with her stethoscope and asked me to breathe as deeply as I could. While she was close to me, I caught a faint aroma of perfume, like roses, which took me back to the embrace she’d given me near the Buckingham Fountain.

  “Your lungs are clear,” she said. “That’s excellent.”

  “Good.”

  “Are you in pain? I can give you something.”

  “I don’t want anything.”

  Dr. Brier stood up and slipped the stethoscope out of her ears. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at me in bed. “You know, Mr. Moran, patients who are in induced comas often have disturbing experiences.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Extremely vivid nightmares are common. Some patients describe them as hallucinations or phantasms. They experience terror, paranoia. Elements of the real world can creep into their dreams, albeit in distorted fashion. The sensations can feel quite real, and they can linger for a while once you regain consciousness. Did you go through anything like that?”

  “I’m still processing what I went through,” I replied.

  “Of course. Well, I’ll let you rest.”

  She gave me that strange intimate smile again, and I thought to myself: You know, don’t you?

  When she got to the door, I called after her. “Dr. Brier?”

  “Yes?”

  “Say the word.”

  She came closer to the bed. “What?”

  “Say the word.”

  We stared at each other. Doctor and patient. Illusionist and fool. Puppet master and doll. I expected her to let the truth slip. I thought she’d put up a finger to remind me to be quiet and then soundlessly invite me to read her lips.

  She’d mouth the word and wink.

  Infinite.

  But no. She played her part to the end. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Moran.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I replied. “Thank you for everything. I mean that.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “You changed my life, and I’ll always be grateful. Eve.”

  “It was my pleasure. Dylan.”

  Then she was gone.

  And me? I was home.

  EPILOGUE

  “Is Ellie still okay?” I teased my wife. “It’s been at least twenty minutes since you checked.”

  Karly flushed with embarrassment as she slid her phone back into her purse. She’d already called her parents four times to make sure that our daughter was fine. Which, of course, she was. But this was the first time we’d gone out on our own since Ellie was born, so I understood why Karly was nervous.

  “Oh, yes, everything’s perfect. Just like you said it would be. If you can believe it, my dad says that my mother is on her knees squawking and making duck noises to entertain her.”

  “Susannah? Please tell me he took video.”

  “He did. He’s sending it to my phone. You know, I’m beginning to think this grandparent thing may buy me a free pass for having quit the real estate business.”

  I smiled at my sudden sense of déjà vu. “Do you miss it?”

  “No. What about you?”

  “The hotel biz? Not a bit. I prefer the nonprofit world. Well, except when I see my paycheck.”

  “We do okay,” Karly said.

  She slipped her hand into mine as we stood by the lake. It was a clear July evening, late, with the day’s blue sky giving way to darkness. Only a handful of stars outshone the lights of the city. Crowds surrounded us up and down the lakeshore. Other couples walked hand in hand, children squealed, and joggers ran along the waterfront sidewalk. Behind us, we could hear the strains of rock music blaring from the band shell in Grant Park. Polish, Mexican, Greek, barbecue, and a hundred other ethnic food aromas mixed in the air. The Taste of Chicago festival was going on, and thousands of people were squeezed into downtown on a Saturday night. We’d come here to join the party.

  And to mark an anniversary.

  “Two years,” Karly said, because she could see we were thinking about the same thing. “Two years ago tonight, we nearly died in that river.”

  Despite the warm air, she shivered with a memory of being under the water. I tilted up her chin and kissed her soft lips. “But we didn’t die.”

  “No.”

  “Do you want the truth? I wouldn’t change what happened even if I could. That night made everything better.”

  “I know it did.”

  “Look at me now,” I added, smiling. “I’m married to the poet laureate of River Park.”

  Karly rolled her eyes. “It’s one book. We’ll be lucky if we make five hundred dollars.”

  “That doesn’t matter. I’m incredibly proud of you.”

  She shoved me away playfully, but I knew she was pleased. We’d spent a lot of sleepless nights while she was pregnant and after Ellie was born, and sometimes Karly would sit by the fire and murmur poems into the voice recorder on her phone. She said she didn’t know where the words came from; it was almost as if they just sprang into her head from someone else’s mind. To her surprise, when she let her father read them, he said they were good. He sent them to his publisher, who thought they were good, too.

  I wasn’t surprised at all.

  Karly inhaled the atmosphere of the park. She still had some pent-up energy. We’d already been here for hours, walking, kissing, talking, sampling foods, but Karly wanted to make the most of our one night of freedom. Her parents had Ellie until morning, so this was our time to be lovers again.

  Her face glowed as she spied on the people around us. That had always been one of her gifts, to glory in the happiness of others. The older woman on the bench, with her head on her husband’s shoulder. The two ten-year-olds kicking a soccer ball back and forth on the grass. A street performer juggling bowling pins for tips. A woman in a purple sports bra, jogging toward us, caught up in whatever music she was listening to on her earbuds.

  Different people, happy lives.

  My happiness was seeing the light in my wife’s face. I saw that light when she was holding our daughter. And when she was lying next to me in bed. I saw that same kind of light in my own eyes, too, whenever I looked in the mirror. That was a new experience for me.

  Peace.

  “Do you want to go dancing?” Karly suggest
ed.

  “I want to do absolutely everything with you. Where should we go?”

  Karly kept watching the people in the park come and go, her eyes traveling from face to face. “How about the Spybar? We can pretend we’re still young and hip.”

  “The Spybar,” I murmured darkly.

  I looked away at the lake, where the water glistened with reflected lights, and I tried to swallow down a moment of anxiety. Karly was too preoccupied to notice my hesitation. I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about my coma dreams anymore, but the very mention of the Spybar took me back to that night when music pounded in my ears and my beautiful, beautiful wife was bleeding to death in my arms.

  Some moments you just can’t shake. They are with you forever. I had to remind myself that, as vivid as it was, that moment had never actually happened. It was a fantasy played out inside my head while I was lying in a hospital bed.

  “Sure,” I replied. “The Spybar. Let’s go.”

  Karly didn’t answer. Her stare followed the blond jogger who had passed us on the grass. The woman disappeared at a steady run toward the bright arena lights of Grant Park. I could only see the jogger’s back as she went in and out of the shadows.

  “Karly? Are you okay?”

  My wife came out of her trance and gave me a dazzling smile. “I’m fine.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “No, nothing’s wrong. That was just weird.”

  “What was?”

  Karly shrugged. Her head swiveled again. From a distance, she eyed the jogger in the purple sports bra, who was nearly out of sight now, one more runner among hundreds in the Chicago night.

  “That woman over there,” she said. “The blonde who ran past us. It was the strangest thing. I saw her as clear as anything as she went by, and I swear, she looked exactly like me.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’ve published more than twenty thrillers in my life, but Infinite is the most unusual story I’ve ever told. I hope you enjoyed following Dylan Moran on his incredible journey.

  When I was a teenager in the 1970s, one of my favorite novels was The Magus, by British writer John Fowles. It’s the story of a schoolteacher who winds up enmeshed in surreal erotic mysteries on a Greek island, at an estate owned by an enigmatic “magus,” or magician. Ever since I read that book, I’ve had in the back of my head the idea of writing a thriller that pushes the boundaries of reality, much as Fowles did with his literary novel. Infinite is the result. Fowles died in 2005, but I remain grateful to him for the inspiration he gave me as a boy dreaming of being a writer.